Understanding the Importance of Domain Authority

What is domain authority?

Domain Authority is a score (on a 100-point scale) that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines. When you have established a strong domain authority Google automatically trusts your new posts more than they trust the posts made on other sites without that built-in trust. This allows your work to rank higher on SERPs, even though it has not had the time to gain necessary SEO features, like backlinks.

When a website continually publishes high-quality material that search engines and people alike know they can trust, the domain as a whole begins to gain trust in the eyes of the search algorithm. That is why certain sites, like BrightEdge.com, can rank highly for new blog posts, even when the post was only put up a few days ago. On the other hand, if you are a new website still trying to gain traction, your outstanding post written a month ago might still be a few pages back in the SERPs.

Why does domain authority matter?

Google wants to return the highest quality results to its users, which means it needs to be able to recognize those results quickly. If every website on the Internet was judged by itself then new articles from the New York Times, for example, would be hard to find until several weeks after the piece was relevant.

The key is learning how to make your website appear trustworthy and earn that critical domain authority. When you do, you will be able to raise the rankings of all your web pages, increase visibility and build your brand.

How do I increase my domain authority?

Build a quality backlink profile. You need to show the search engines that other websites trust your content regularly.

Build internal links. It is easy to neglect internal links, but they are important to showing Google, and visitors who arrive on your site, how to move around your domain and find relevant content. Internal links also encourage people to remain on your site, which helps build your engagement statistics.

Optimize your technical SEO. You want to make sure that your site is easy to navigate and that your site maps have been uploaded and organized. Meta tags and meta descriptions can help Google know when your content is relevant. Keywords and alt tags also make your content easy to understand and match queries.

Build brand trust. Write and distribute content that people can trust to provide them with accurate, helpful information throughout the buyer’s journey. Use data to know what customers want to see and then deliver it to them.

Domain authority is an important factor for increasing your visibility and rankings on the SERPs. Building your brand to increase this authority is a great way to grow your organization.